Ultimate Gadget Laboratories Ultimate Hacking Keyboard

I used kinesis advantage for about two months. Ended switching to Ultimate Hacking Keyboard and have never been happier - haven't switched the keyboard since - about 4 years now. Coding on Kinesis was just such a pain in terms of usual keys - braces et all: weird, up down arrows: weird. I thought I would adjust after two months, but did not happen for me. YMMV

Without a doubt, the UHK (Ultimate Hacking Keyboard). It changed (for the better) the way I use my desktop. I even ended up buying a travel case for it so I can take it on business trips where I will do a lot of keyboarding. By far my favorite home office purchase.

Here's two of mine: A while back, I wrote a command-line dice rolling program[1] that handles a bunch of esoteric dice notation syntax, both because I was getting into a D&D game with friends, and because I wanted to practice writing a non-trivial parser. (My D&D group pressured me into buying real dice anyway after I rolled five consecutive 1s in a single session.) My current keyboard is an Ultimate Hacking Keyboard, which I like very much, but the one thing I miss from a more traditional layout is the nav cluster (arrow keys, plus the 6 keys above them). Of course these are accessible via the Mod layer on the UHK, but when I need to do something like Control+Shift+Right to select text, adding Mod into that as well becomes a bit much, so I'd prefer to have dedicated keys for these. So, I recently ordered a keyboard kit that is just the 10 nav cluster keys, and my next small project is to assemble it. [1]: https://github.com/DarwinAwardWinner/roll

I'm only a small bit into this hobby/obsession, but the two keyboards I'd recommend are the Moonlander or the Ultimate Hacking Keyboard. They're both split, but the UHK can be combined together (not so easy on the Moonlander.) They're very popular, so have a bunch of good out-of-the-box documentation and a good out-of-the-box experience if you don't want to go too far into the rabbit hole of configuring keys and stuff. I think the UHK is a bit more pleasant build-quality wise, and it's definitely easier to start with because it's not columnar, which is a whole other thing that a keyboard can be. (Some people like columnar layouts, some hate it, I'm undecided myself and use both.)

I love my UHK too but the trackpoint is pretty disappointing, even after you mess with the movement settings to make it slightly less janky. The thumb modules are a huge drop in build quality compared to the excellent keyboard.

Wonder how it compares to the ultimate hacking keyboard ( Uhk )? I’ve been using it for a few years now and I say the same. They look very similar so curious if you’ve tried it too and the dygma still came out on top?

Yes, I totally agree the split makes much more sense than jamming your wrists together to do many repetitive motions! I like the way the UHK allows you to slightly shuffle and adjust your position - more/less angle/separation. Bit like how you can adjust your hand position on a steering wheel or racing bike to adjust your position. What do you mean by using the key cluster module? I don't have it, but how does that help you when you need to use a laptop?

Also went down this rabbit hole. Did a review of the split keyboard UHK v2 which I highly recommend. https://youtu.be/OPmoB8-11JY Edit: Apologies for the video quality. PS: The UHK might be of interest to some who aren't sure if a split is their thing. It isn't ortholinear, so the keys are staggered in the usual way. It also allows the keyboard to be re-connected in a single slab if you choose not to use the split. I'd def recommend the split to help with preventing carpal tunnel or RSI.

I use and strongly prefer a split keyboard for these reasons. I’m not too far down the rabbit hole but when I got my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard[1] I was finally a happy camper. The improvement over the few membrane split keyboards available was noticeable. Especially once I figured out the layer mappings I like. It’s sooo much better than the butterfly MacBook keyboard that I basically don’t use my laptop away from my desk any more. I always pack my UHK when I travel. I use a Logitech mouse between the two keyboard halves. I waited years from the initial find on Crowd Supply to having it. Then several more years before the promised “modules” shipped. By the time the modules arrived I had adapted so completely to the keyboard I haven’t actually found much use for the extra key cluster. I want to like the trackpad module but it doesn’t have two-finger scrolling so it just annoys me when I try to use it. EDIT: Forgot to mention, this setup resulted in so much less hand, arm, and shoulder pain. [1] https://ultimatehackingkeyboard.com/

On my Ultimate Hacking Keyboard I have a mapping of (left)space+q to produce Esc which for this combo I hit comfortably with my left hand thumb + ring finger. On other keyboards I find fishing for the Esc key with the left ring or sometimes even middle finger good enough since it's so prominently singled out on the top left corner on all the keyboards I had yet to use, but it breaks the flow a bit more. It probably helps that I'm not typing in proper form for the 10-finger system but only some hodgepodge approximation of it...

Or just buy the ultimate hacking keyboard with track point module.